eCommerce

The consumer investment train keeps rolling through Los Angeles, with organic perfumer Skylar Body becoming the latest brand that investors here are banking on for a big win. The company raised $3 million late last year in a round led by Upfront Ventures, with participation from serial entrepreneur-turned-investor Brian Lee and other top-tier local investors. Read More

A demographic and place data firm has ranked Amazon’s HQ2 top 20 picks across a number of factors to predict which city the tech giant will choose for its new headquarters. The firm, Sperling BestPlaces, has had a fairly good track record with its prior picks. This time around, it’s putting Atlanta, Georgia at the top of its list, followed by other areas in the Eastern U.S. Read More

Gamers worldwide! Nike, PlayStation and Oklahoma Thunder player Paul George have a shoe in the works that may be right up your alley. The PG2, the second generation of Paul George’s signature shoes, is themed around the PlayStation console, complete with tongues that light up. Buttons inside the tongues let the owner turn on and off those lights, shaped in the PlayStation logo and PG logo. Read More

As food delivery hopefuls like Deliveroo and Amazon get more involved in the making of food themselves, Uber’s food delivery branch Uber Eats has made an acquisition that could see the company also producing more of the product it’s bringing to its customers. Ando — the delivery-only ‘restaurant’ founded by Momofuku chef David Chang — announced today that it… Read More

Highsnobiety has come a long way. What began as a sneaker passion blog in 2005 now attracts upwards of 9 million visitors monthly to its site containing news and analysis of high fashion, streetwear and culture. The site has attracted a highly influential audience of young, educated and affluent, mainly millennial male, readers. These are the hard-to-reach people even for social media, at… Read More

Amazon has reviewed the proposals from potential candidate cities for its second North American headquarters location, and it found 20 of those the most promising. The mayors of these top 20 cities will now fight to the death in a Battle Royale-style island arena… er wait, no actually they’ll just move on the next portion of Amazon’s submission phase, which includes… Read More

It’s estimated that over one-third of Americans rent their homes, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council. And half of those people are under 30-years-old.
But what’s the best way for this often transient group of people to find a new place to live? Craigslist has been a leader in online rentals, but not everyone is satisfied with the user experience.
Apartment… Read More

JD.com, the Chinese e-commerce firm that rivals Alibaba, has continued its expansion in Southeast Asia with an investment in Vietnam-based Tiki, a seven-year-old online retail service.
JD.com is leading a Series C investment round in Tiki alongside VNG, the Vietnam-based online media and gaming company that is already an investor. The round itself is undisclosed, but TechCrunch understands… Read More

Latest Crunch Report

Amazon has quietly launched a new feature that’s seemingly aimed at helping the retailer better compete with discount shopping apps such as Wish and others. In the Amazon mobile app and on the web, Amazon recently added a new section offering products under $10 that ship for free. Some of the products are also available on Prime, but the feature doesn’t appear to be limited to… Read More

Instacart has today announced the acquisition of Unata, a Toronto-based company that offers a platform for both grocers and consumers to interact digitally. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Unata’s product, unlike Instacart’s, is a white-label grocery platform, letting grocers anywhere create apps and websites for consumers to order products, complete with coupons… Read More

E-commerce remains among the biggest tech opportunities in India, one of the world’s most populated countries whose economy continues to rapidly evolve and now has over 500 million people connecting to the Internet. And today, a startup that is playing in this space — aiming to make it easier to take and make payments online — has announced a significant round of… Read More

It hasn’t been a great couple of weeks for Alibaba in the U.S.. First affiliate Ant Financial’s proposed acquisition of MoneyGram collapsed due to objections from the U.S. government, now its Taobao service has the dubious honor of again featuring on the USTR (United States Trade Representative) naughty list.
Taobao, Alibaba’s hugely popular marketplace, is among 25… Read More

Brit + Co laid off some employees earlier this month as part of a reorganization, TechCrunch has learned. Brit + Co declined to comment on the number laid off, but the women’s lifestyle and digital media company’s employee base went from 92 people in September 2017 to just 78 today, according to its team page.
“It’s been a very unpredictable time in the media industry… Read More

New York-based Boxed, the startup for buying food and household items in bulk, is in talks to be acquired by Kroger for about $500 million. Other retailers are also expected to be making bids.
The news was first reported by Forbes and confirmed to TechCrunch by a source with knowledge of the situation. We’re hearing that the company is aiming to make a decision this weekend.
Founded… Read More

Ford has a new partner for its autonomous vehicle program: Postmates. The on-demand delivery service provider is working with the automaker through its self-driving vehicle platform, in a similar way to existing partner Domino’s Pizza. Postmates is the first on-demand delivery app to work with Ford in this capacity, and will test with the platform this year, including in a pilot in a… Read More

Patents may sometimes get a bad rap for how they are abused (and misused) by some companies for commercial gain, but they also remain a marker of how a tech company is progressing with its R&D and pushing ahead on innovation. For one measure of that advance, today, IFI Claims, the patent analytics firm, published its 2017 list of companies with the most U.S. patents assigned for the… Read More

August Home, the smart lock startup that was acquired by lock giant Assa Abloy in October last year, is stepping up its delivery game. At CES today, the company announced a service it’s calling August Access, where retailers can work with August and its partner Deliv to open your front door and bring packages directly into your home when you are not there, if you use a smart lock… Read More

While Google dominates the world when it comes to search, portals for those looking for products and services in specific niches continue to have a place in our online world. In one of the latest developments, Smava, a German startup that has built a marketplace/portal for people to search for and take out loans, has raised $65 million to grow its business across Europe.
The funding comes… Read More